


Death and the Widow

by lilacsigil



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Ballet, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Red Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 23:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21418642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: Death likes humans, but their lives are so short that she usually only gets to see them twice, and they don't remember one of those. Natasha is different.
Relationships: Death of the Endless/Natasha Romanov (Marvel)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 69
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	Death and the Widow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/gifts).

Lyudmila had been a ballet dancer since she was four years old. She was now forty-five years old and had been executed. 

"Really, one bullet would have done," she said to Death. "They didn't need a whole firing squad."

"A lot of people find firing squads impressive," Death replied, taking Lyudmila's elegant hand in hers. "It's nice to meet someone who doesn't."

"If you're going to put on a show, you should have an audience. All this secrecy…I have never liked it. Where are we going now?"

"That's really not up to me," Death told her, in the old-fashioned Russian that her grandmother had spoken in Lyudmila's earliest memories. "That's up to you."

"Oh, good!" Lyudmila waved a hand and she was wearing a white tutu, feathers in her hair. "My first leading role." She tilted her head, listening to music that Death couldn't hear, then looked off into the distance, at something Death couldn't see. "And that's my cue!" She hurried off, holding her arms perfectly in position, and leapt onto her stage. 

Death smiled. She always liked the artists. Then she realised that Lyudmila hadn't departed at all. She was standing there, poised, completely still, her chest forward and her arms back like a bird landing on the water. 

"Lyudmila Ivanova?" Death called to her, but she didn't reply. Death walked a little circle around her, carefully perusing the immobile figure. Then she saw it: a tiny gap in Lyudmila's head. Some part of her was still alive, keeping her from moving on. Poor Lyudmila! She was ready to dance, but the musical cue had not come. 

Death made a helter skelter in the air and slid happily all the way back to the courtyard where she'd found Lyudmila. Two old women were on their hands and knees scrubbing the blood out of the concrete, and the young men who'd executed her were sharing a cigarette inside the barely warmer guardroom. None of them had any part of Lyudmila, and anyway, Lyudmila wasn't from a tradition where every part of her body had to be buried intact. Death had occasionally found people from those traditions not wanting to move on until every part was restored to them, but that wasn't the case for Lyudmila. She was entirely ready, and something was holding her back. 

Death wandered through the grim concrete prison where Lyudmila had lived her last year, looking for traces of her. Many of the prisoners called out to Death – Grandmother! Grandmother! – as those ready for her sometimes did. She soothed them with a lullaby and drifted on. Deep inside the prison, she found something very odd: a row of steel chairs with leather straps was no great surprise, but the hairdryer-like metal caps above them were strange, with electrical wires dangling free. Behind the chairs was a bank of computers whirring and ticking their magnetic tape. Death felt drawn to one of the computers, and touched it with one finger. The tape stopped moving and yes! There was a trace of Lyudmila! Well, this was new! Death had seen plenty of people hide parts of their soul in an egg, or an animal, or a pretty little casket, but not a computer. And yet, Lyudmila was still not here. Death sighed and transformed herself into information, which always itched, and jumped into the magnetic tape. Yes, that was part of Lyudmila, but this was not living. This was no more than a photograph, and would not keep her here. 

Changing back, Death searched the entire Soviet Union to find that trace again: not that it couldn't be elsewhere, but this nation was good at keeping its information to itself. And there it was! A living part of Lyudmila! Death reconstituted herself a thousand miles away, in a closed military city, and kept looking. 

She had appeared in a military school of some kind: she could hear girls outside marching and shouting, and other girls reciting poetry en masse. Lyudmila was closer than that, though, directly downstairs from the dormitory in which Death was standing. Drifting through the floor, she found herself in a ballet studio. Only one girl was here, a redheaded teenager with angular limbs she had not quite grown into. She was sitting and stretching on the floor, bent forward so far that her chest was on the ground between her outspread legs. There was no music, only a metronome. 

"Oh, hello," the girl said. "I didn't know anyone was going to be watching me practise."

Death almost looked around to see who else was there, but she could always sense the living, and there was only one here. The girl wasn't on the brink of death herself, so Death wasn't sure why she was suddenly visible to her. Death glanced down to see how she appeared to the girl: she was about Lyudmila's age, dressed in a black leotard and ballet slippers. Why the girl thought she was this person, she had no idea. 

"Go ahead, don't mind me," Death told her. "I'll just be over here."

The girl finished her stretches, and ran through some steps at the barre. For someone so flexible, she was a little hesitant at some of the movements, and once managed to hit herself in the face with her own hand. This was obviously frustrating for her, and she repeated the movement over and over until it was correct. Eventually, she moved away from the barre and adjusted the metronome, then began to dance. 

Death recognised the variation immediately: it was from _Giselle_, a ballet she had attended on opening night due to exciting rumours that the prima ballerina was ill and would in fact die on stage during the performance. She'd known this to be untrue, but it was nonetheless an interesting twist that she'd greatly enjoyed experiencing in company with her sibling Desire. The variations were added later, but Death had enjoyed the ballet several times since, despite the distinct lack of actual fatalities.   
The girl began strongly, her motions elegant, but the more complex the dance became, the further she fell behind the metronome's ominous ticking. Every motion on pointe was causing her pain, despite her excellent form, and when she reached the famous hopping sequence she lasted only two hops before falling. 

Death reached over and turned off the metronome. "Are you all right?"

"I'm sure I've done this before! I can't remember when, exactly, but it went perfectly. And now my body is…" She gestured at herself in frustration. "It's all wrong. Why couldn't I hold on pointe? You saw my _relevés_ at the barre were fine!" 

"Go back to the barre," Death told her. "Show me again. Oh, and which girl are you?"

"Natasha Romanova," she replied, dashing obediently to the barre. 

Lyudmila was still present in Death's mind, awaiting her musical cue, and Death superimposed her image over young Natasha. Natasha was a skilled and precise dancer, yes, but she was a little shorter than Lyudmila, and her age meant that the little bones of her feet were more flexible. Lyudmila's technique had been perfected over years that this child had not yet experienced. 

"Good," Death said. "Now, come dance the variation again."

Natasha flicked on the metronome and danced again, Lyudmila's silhouette over hers. Yes, that was it: she was not dancing as herself, she was trying and failing to dance as Lyudmila. 

Death clapped her hands. "Enough! Who told you to dance this?"

"Madame B," Natasha said, her voice small. 

"Come here." Death stretched out a hand and Natasha's eyes flicked from side to side like a cornered animal's, but she obeyed. 

Death rested her hand on Natasha's head and absorbed a copy of her memories. Ah, there it was, Natasha sitting under one of the hairdryer-like metal caps, her body arching upwards as the computers whirred behind her. Lyudmila's body memories transferred from the magnetic tape into Natasha, living again when they should be dead with Lyudmila. The Natasha of the memory had a seizure, biting into her own lower lip, and Death expected that the shadowy adult figures around her would stop the transfer, but they did not. Part of Natasha's brain was being overwritten with Lyudmila's as she sat strapped into that chair, her body rigid and her eyes wide open.

"The transfer is going well," a man said. 

"She is the strongest of them and it is still damaging her," a woman replied. "Are you sure this is not better done in adults? We both have to answer to the Director."

"Adults simply die. Young children don't retain the data. This is the perfect age to test the information transfer."

"If you say so." The woman sounded dubious, but she made no motion to stop the girl's pain. 

Death cradled Natasha in her arms. "Sleep now," she said, though granting good dreams was not in her power. The girl slumped forward and Death lowered her gently to the floor. 

Lyudmila appeared in the studio, still in her white tutu. "Oh! I was backstage! My cue?" she said in some confusion. 

Gently, Death coaxed the tendril of memory from Natasha's brain and limbs and let it curl around her finger. It was doing Natasha no good and besides, it didn't belong to her. 

Lyudmila ran across the studio, her toe blocks tapping on the floor, and Death neatly transferred the tendril across to Lyudmila. That was the easy part: it knew where it belonged. 

Again, Lyudmila tilted her head to the music that Death couldn't hear, and made her grand entrance. Or, in this case, exit. She was gone.

Death lowered Natasha to the floor. "I'll see you later," she told her, knowing that it was true, for everyone. 

A word to her little sister Delirium and Death soon found both the magnetic tapes and the scientist who had made them irreversibly confused. There would be no more theft from the dead. 

*

Waiting by the frozen river was cold, but not as cold as falling into it. Natasha was the one waiting, and her targets were the ones who had, to their immense surprise, found themselves in the water. Natasha had counted the seconds since the car fell through the booby-trapped ice and there was no hope of survival for the men now. 

She spotted a woman walking out across the fractured ice, dressed in heavy winter gear similar to Natasha's, only in black fur rather than white. Damn, maybe her intelligence about their rendezvous with the Mujahideen fighters was wrong, and someone was meeting them here, instead. It seemed unlikely that the woman would be able to rescue any of them by now, but it was no use taking chances. Natasha carefully aimed her rifle and shot her. 

Instead of falling, she waved her arms in Natasha's direction as if she was shooing an animal. Natasha fired again, thinking that perhaps she had missed, but the woman still did not fall. Worse, she was now trekking across the ice towards Natasha's position. Body armour, perhaps? Natasha waited for her to get closer so that she could drop down on her and cut her throat. As she got closer, Natasha began to make out details: her pale face, the dark hair sticking out of the hat, and she seemed oddly familiar. She looked about the same age as Natasha, but that meant nothing, since even Natasha herself wasn't the age that she looked. 

"Hello! I remember you!" the woman said, in a bright, cheerful voice. 

"I think I remember you also," Natasha replied, cautiously. "Sunset sky?"

"Oh, that was a password! Sorry, my brother's good with passwords but he's not available right now. You might remember me from ballet, though."

Yes, that was it! She was the teacher who had shown up just once, when Natasha was about twelve. Natasha thought that she looked much younger now, but that might just be the perspective of forty years. Everyone looks old when you're a child.

"Why are you here?" Natasha asked her. Not everyone who had taught in the Red Room was an assassin or agent, though everyone had military classification. It seemed odd for a ballet teacher to be out here in the Tajik SSR, but perhaps she had other skills. 

"Not for you, at least not yet." The woman peered at her. "Wow, I'm not the best with human ages, but I'm fairly sure you should look older than you do. Did you ever run into a tall, pale man with stars for eyes?"

"No?" 

"Ah well. My brother is hardly the only reason that a human might not age or die. Same brother who likes passwords, by the way. No, I'm here for the men in the river."

"For confirmation of death! I understand." Natasha hadn't been informed that the men were important enough to need confirmation, but a sudden change of plans was no surprise. She sometimes thought that the human energy spent keeping secrets would be enough to replace every reactor in the USSR. "Nobody told me to keep an item for confirmation. Unless their bodies are stuck in the vehicle, they've probably been swept downstream already. We could check before the hole in the ice closes up, though." She jumped down from her perch on a rocky, snow-covered outcropping to join the black-clad woman. 

"That's very sweet of you, but I don't need any confirmation," the woman replied. "I know death." She giggled. "And so do you." 

Natasha frowned in some confusion, but she was glad that she didn't have to walk on the ice she'd just blown up. 

The woman reached out with one black-gloved hand and touched the side of Natasha's face. "I'll see you later, okay?" And then she was gone. 

Natasha shook her head. Was she from the rumoured Super Soldier program? A scientific experiment in teleportation? A new variation on the Red Room? She'd never know, but – a secret kept close to her heart – she did hope that the woman's promise of "later" came true. 

* 

Death hadn't seen so much of Natasha recently. She had almost met up with her at the death of a computer program named Arnim Zola, but Natasha and another undying human had fled before the final moment. Death frowned at Zola's magnetic tapes: she thought she had solved that problem the first time she'd met Natasha, but it seemed that the same invention had sprung up elsewhere. Zola had only been copying himself, so she hardly felt she could criticise that, even though she was going to be meeting copies of him for a hundred years yet. In Sokovia, she had been far too busy on the ground to visit Natasha up in the sky, and then, of course, Thanos had tried to catch her attention by extinguishing half the life in the universe. Why did he think she would like that? Death was all about consent, but Thanos saw only her inevitability. 

She'd had to divide herself into billions of independent entities to deal with that mess, and she still had a headache from the reassembling, and another headache from her sister Despair constantly muttering that now Death knew what it was like for her, all the time. Not that Death really had a head, as such, but she did so like to anthropomorphise herself. 

And then Natasha was there. 

"Hello. I thought I'd see you again," Natasha said. She wasn't wearing the high-tech suit she'd died in, but track pants, worn sneakers, and a battered grey t-shirt that said AVENGERS INITIATIVE across the front. 

Death smiled at her. "You worked it out?" 

"Not until I stopped constantly seeing you. I had to understand what was different about my life now that I'd switched sides."

"You kept the Widow name, though." 

"I had a reputation to uphold!" Natasha shrugged. "I did see you in New York, and a few other times, but never as close."

Death made a huffy noise. "Excuse you, I was a very pretty Chitauri Gatherer of the Dead! Not that you can see in the ultra-violet spectrum…"

"Anyway, here I am. Did I balance my ledger?"

Death took her hands. "Oh, Natasha, it's another of my brothers who keeps ledgers. I don't care about that."

"It's okay. I didn't try for you. I tried for me." Natasha leaned forward and kissed Death on her black-lipsticked mouth. "I thought you'd be cold, but no."

Death stared at her, fascinated. It was so rare that she had a long association with anyone mortal, let alone one who tried to kiss her, or indeed thought anything about her as a person at all. "Why did you kiss me?" she asked.

Natasha smiled, her entire face lighting up. Death had never seen her smile like that. "Because you've always cared about me, and I wanted to show you that I care about you, too." She stroked the side of Death's face. 

Death leaned her head into Natasha's touch. "It wasn't you I was helping; it was the dancer whose memories had been stolen."

"And yet you did help me. After your visit, the tapes were all scrambled and the professor who forced me into the machine went completely mad. All his research was censored out of existence. When I realised that my memories were my own again, that was the first time I felt free, even for a moment." 

"A very small freedom," Death offered.

"An important one. Every day that I have been free, I have made good use of that time. I am free, now. This is what I choose to do."

"Will you stay with me a while?" Death asked, astonished that she was saying such things, even to someone she had known this long. 

"Of course." She kissed Death again, and this time Death opened her mouth, her mind, her heart, and kissed her back.


End file.
